When psychedelia and blues came together in Cream’s quickfire trio of studio albums in the late 1960s, it created a blueprint for blues-respecting bottom-heavy rock that would rule the airwaves for at least a decade. In their roots and early trajectories, the Winter brothers, emerging out of the heartland of Beaumont, Texas, were not unlike north …
Continue reading soundstreamsunday #104: “Frankenstein” by the Edgar Winter Group
Southern Rock’s manifesto is like no other rock album. The Allman Brothers Band, released in November 1969, carries a hard sonic power absent from its closest temporal and spiritual brother, the Band’s Music from Big Pink (1968), and tight, sharp-cornered riffing missing from the work of the Grateful Dead, who the Allmans resembled in their two-drummer, …
Continue reading soundstreamsunday #103: “Every Hungry Woman” by the Allman Brothers Band
On the other side of the 70s country rock that made the Eagles fabulously famous and rich — and drove them eventually to a dark funk that produced songs like “Those Shoes” — dwells Little Feat, emerging from the Zappa/Beefheart camp of SoCal weirdness during the same period, with funky desperate darkness fully intact from …
Continue reading soundstreamsunday #102: “Kiss It Off” by Little Feat
The dark end of late 70s rock culture makes for strange bedfellows on the weekly infinite linear mixtape. One week after Judas Priest released Unleashed in the East in September 1979, a career milestone kickstarting broad commercial success, the Eagles issued The Long Run, a (mostly) career-ending album that took too long to make, wore on …
Continue reading soundstreamsunday #101: “Those Shoes” by the Eagles
Released in September 1979, Unleashed in the East, recorded on the Japanese leg of their Hell Bent for Leather tour, capped Judas Priest’s first long and storied decade, six months before their mainstream breakthrough British Steel. It’s a killer set, brightly produced, and enlivened some of their early material, which could tend towards studio stiffness. …
Continue reading soundstreamsunday #100: “Victim of Changes” by Judas Priest
If they’re the only band on the infinite linear mixtape to be featured twice, and back-to-back at that, it’s because of the singularity of their two lead singers, who so influenced their respective versions of Black Sabbath that each iteration of the band made a distinct impact on rock and metal. Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi …
Continue reading soundstreamsunday #99: “Black Sabbath” by Black Sabbath
Metal is a tricky business. So is memory. I first heard “Children of the Sea” soon after it was released, I think, as a young teenager in 1980, tutored by an older sister in thrall to Rush’s Permanent Waves, Judas Priest’s Unleashed in the East, and, most of all, Black Sabbath’s Heaven and Hell. It …
Continue reading soundstreamsunday #98: “Children of the Sea” by Black Sabbath
As a commercially successful American hard rock band fronted by two women in the 1970s, Heart was unique, and while it’s Patti Smith and the Runaways that have turned legendary (with merit, no doubt) for their stories, Heart’s impact on women in rock is, must be, outsized, and deserving of the same attention. While their …
Continue reading soundstreamsunday #97: “Mistral Wind” by Heart
It’s no real surprise that “Huey Newton” is not about Huey Newton but rather the rabbit holes of internet searches and the semi-free association that can result. St. Vincent’s self-titled fourth album (2014) is full of these tricky ‘scapes, it’s second single, “Digital Witness,” a frugging Beefheartian horn romp through the minefield of social media …
Continue reading soundstreamsunday #96: “Huey Newton” by St. Vincent
You could do worse than follow the 1951 Wayne Shanklin song “Jezebel” as a guiding aesthetic for launching a recording career. A hit for Frankie Laine (1951), Edith Piaf (1951), and, remarkably, Herman’s Hermits (1966), “Jezebel” is built around a flamenco figure that adapts itself well to pop drama and, as Anna Calvi demonstrated on …
Continue reading soundstreamsunday #95: “Jezebel” by Anna Calvi
Progarchy 